Chipped a front tooth? Here is what to do, in order

The first hour

Rinse with warm water and check the damage in a mirror. If you can find the broken fragment, keep it moist in a small container of milk or your own saliva; dentists can sometimes bond the original piece back on, and it is always useful for matching. If the edge left behind is sharp, a bit of sugar-free chewing gum or dental wax over it protects your lip and tongue.

Pain is the triage signal. A chip that stings briefly with cold drinks can wait a few days for an appointment. A tooth that aches on its own, feels loose, or shows a pink or bleeding spot at the centre of the break has nerve involvement and needs a dentist the same day. Call the clinic and say it is urgent; we hold flexibility in the diary for exactly this.

How chips get repaired

Small chips, the kind you feel with your tongue more than see, are usually smoothed and rebuilt with composite bonding in a single visit. The dentist sculpts tooth-coloured resin over the missing corner, cures it with light and polishes it to match. Done well it is invisible, and it is the least expensive fix in cosmetic dentistry.

Bigger breaks need more structure. A chip that has taken a real corner off the tooth may call for a veneer, which covers the whole front face and restores the shape permanently. A break that has lost most of the biting edge, or one on a tooth that was already heavily filled, is usually crowned. And if the nerve was exposed, a root canal saves the tooth before the crown protects it.

The crack you cannot see

The reason to have even a painless chip assessed: chips are sometimes the visible end of a crack that continues into the tooth. A crack caught early can be stabilised with bonding or a crown and stays a crack. Left alone under chewing pressure, it grows, and a tooth that splits below the gumline usually cannot be saved. Ten minutes in the chair settles the question, and at The Dentist a first assessment for new patients costs nothing.